If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

ARLINGTON, Va. — About 100 U.S. soldiers are expected to man a Patriot missile battery in Poland as part of an agreement recently struck between U.S. and Polish officials, a top State Department official said Monday.

Under the agreement, the United States can base part of its missile defense system in Poland; in return, the U.S. military will send Patriot missiles to Poland.

Both sides hope to establish a garrison for the battery by 2012, said John C. Rood, acting undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

"The Patriot battery in question will be a U.S. Army Patriot battery, so it will be owned and operated by the United States Army … The Polish government has agreed to furnish a site, as well as infrastructure and necessary facilities for establishment of a Patriot garrison," Rood said at a news conference Monday.

snip

"A battery of this size should be a little over 100 people for the air defenders, adding in the rest of the complement responsible for security and maintenance and things of that nature would add people; I don’t have a specific number for you on that."

The Patriot battery will be an existing battery moved to Poland from another location, such as Germany or Texas, Rood said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates will determine where the Patriot battery will come from.

The pact between Warsaw and Washington comes at a time of escalating tensions with Russia, which invaded neighboring Georgia on Aug. 6.

After the agreement was announced earlier this month, Russia threatened to target Poland with nuclear weapons.

Gates has said Russia’s invasion of Georgia showed it was trying to reassert its control over former parts of the Soviet Union and punish former Eastern bloc countries that are developing close ties with the west.

"My guess is that most of those countries, if not all of them, probably have a higher incentive to stand with us now than they did before, now that they have seen what the Russians have done in Georgia," he said on Aug. 14, just before the agreement with Poland was announced.http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?s...&article=57013

Military help for Georgia is a 'declaration of war', says Moscow in extraordinary warning to the West
Moscow has issued an extraordinary warning to the West that military assistance to Georgia for use against South Ossetia or Abkhazia would be viewed as a "declaration of war" by Russia. The extreme rhetoric from the Kremlin's envoy to NATO came as President Dmitry Medvedev stressed he will make a military response to US missile defence installations in eastern Europe, sending new shudders across countries whose people were once blighted by the Iron Curtain. And Moscow also...

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said in an interview Wednesday he would prefer Russia to work with the West and that Moscow would lose again if it came to confrontation. 'As Europe, we're 10 times richer than Russia and along with the United States 20 times,' Sikorski told the daily Dziennik. 'I'd prefer if Russia worked together and integrated itself with the wider-known West, but if it comes to confrontation, then it will lose again.' Sikorski's comments came a day after Russian...

US and Russian warships took up positions in the Black Sea today in a risky war of nerves on opposing sides of the Georgia conflict. With the Russians effectively controlling Georgia's main naval base of Poti, Moscow also dispatched the Moskva missile cruiser and two smaller craft on "peacekeeping" duties at the port of Sukhumi on the coast of Abkhazia, the breakaway region that the Kremlin recognised as independent yesterday.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...eorgia.russia1

Russia's navy is to monitor the build-up of Nato forces in the Black Sea, a senior Russian defence official has said. "Given the build-up of Nato forces in the Black Sea area, the (Russian Black Sea) fleet has also begun taking measures to monitor their activity," Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian military's General Staff said. The move comes as a US military ship intending to dock at the Georgian port of Poti where Russian forces are posted on the outskirts, changed course to dock in Batumi, a port well south of the zone of fighting in this month’s... http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...breaking18.htm

“Direct confrontation” between American and Russian warships in the Black Sea"

Cold War tension rises as Putin talks of Black Sea confrontationRussia has criticised the US for using naval ships to deliver aid to Georgia

A new Cold War between Russia and the West grew steadily closer yesterday after the Kremlin gave a warning about “direct confrontation” between American and Russian warships in the Black Sea.

Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, declared that Russia was taking “measures of precaution” against American and Nato naval ships. “Let’s hope we do not see any direct confrontation in that,” he said.

Any attempt by countries in the West to isolate Russia would “definitely harm the economic interests of those states”, he said.

A day after the Kremlin said that it was ready to fight a new Cold War, both sides gave the impression that they were preparing for a protracted stand-off. Foreign ministers of the G7 leading industrialised nations condemned Russia’s excessive use of force and the decision to recognise the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, while the US and Russia shelved a key nuclear agreement that would have given the Americans access to Russian nuclear technologies and Russia help from the US in establishing an international nuclear fuel storage facility for spent fuel.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, also flew to Ukraine to assemble the “widest possible coalition against Russian aggression”, while Georgia downgraded its diplomatic relations with Russia, recalling all but two of its diplomats from Moscow in protest at the continuing occupation of its country. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4622422.ece